Father's Day

Our Father's Day dinner may have been a complete flop, but our breakfast certainly wasn't!

We made up this granola, and this time around we layered it with plain yogurt, bananas and blueberries. I often have this granola with yogurt for breakfast and then again for lunch and have even been tempted to serve it for dinner, it's so delicious. I cooked up some sausages from our local co-op market to serve alongside. Ryan then spent the day reverting to teenage-dom by playing Starcraft II. And while we didn't have a great dinner, we did enjoy some pastries from our local Larsen's Bakery for dessert.

More Fabric

Today I went to my local quilt shop again (I seriously lucked out with this place being so close) and found the rest of my medium and dark fabrics for Gareth's quilt. I was only planning on buying eight different fabrics total (and I already have two), but there were so many awesome options that I ended up buying a little less of these new ones in order to purchase more variety.

And even with ten fabrics there were some it was hard to give up. Going to the quilt shop on a Saturday is a must from here on out - it's such a rejuvenating experience when I don't have Gareth along with me! This particular shop is awesome in that they have a corner with toys to play with, so Gareth isn't pestering to leave or getting into all the fabric, but it's obviously still easier without worrying about him bugging everyone else. I'm excited to go back for my lights, but in the meantime I can start washing and cutting!

Produce

Just a few weeks ago our garden looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

If you remember, Gareth loves lettuce. He asked to go cut some off while I was practicing this morning:

I distinctly remember disliking lettuce as a kid, so he's a bit baffling to me - but I'm not going to complain!

Pancakes

Since we've moved in here we've started a new breakfast routine: on weekdays we have oatmeal (with steel-cut oats!) or toast or some other every-day easy thing, then on weekends we do something more time-intensive (and usually less healthy).

When Ryan and I got married we were given a cookbook that I haven't ever used much. I've often looked through it, eyeing the sumptuous-looking dishes contained therein. But, most of them are intended to make enough for two people and many of them have very expensive ingredients. So I always figured I'd use it when we were empty-nesters and had more money. When we decided to try to make exciting weekend breakfasts, I needed ideas and thought it'd be worth a look.

Turns out their pancake recipe is marvelous. And the berry sauce/syrup that goes along with it as well. Ryan actually prefers the berries to maple syrup because they're not as sweet.

Melted Berries:

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries

1/4 cup sugar, plus more as needed

1 Tbsp. unsalted butter

pinch of kosher salt

fresh lemon juice as needed

Pancakes:

1 1/4 cups flour

2 tsp. granulated sugar

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tsp. baking soda

unsalted butter, melted

To make the berries you combine the berries, sugar, salt and butter in a small saucepan and cook until the juices flow (we use frozen, so we basically cook them until the berries are thawed.) I gave you the amount they call for sugar-wise, but we actually put in much, much less. Partly because the only frozen raspberries at our store are already sweetened and partly because that's just way too much sugar for our taste. We put in a couple of tablespoons, though I've also done it without any added sugar and it works fine that way as well. The lemon juice is optional.

For the pancakes: stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt (if I remember rightly, I use less salt than they call for) in a small bowl. Then whisk the eggs in a medium bowl and add the buttermilk (I use soured milk), sour cream, and baking soda. Add the flour mixture and mix it all up. Stir in 1 tablespoon of melted butter. To cook them, I melt a little butter on our griddle before spooning the batter on.

I usually double the recipe to make sure we have enough (depending on how much berry mixture people use you might or might not need to double that - one week we didn't need to, another we did). We usually have some leftover batter, which stores well in the fridge for one day, so we always make the leftover up either the next day or later the same day. Ryan likes them so much that he wanted me to be sure we shared the recipe with everyone. And, as you can see, Gareth loves them as well!

Zoo Playdate

First, I apologize for the lack of blogging lately. My excuse is that I've been practicing several hours a day the last few weeks, and, honestly, that takes priority over blogging. Hopefully as we shift and balance things I'll be able to find more time to update.

A few weeks ago Gareth and I got together with a friend who will be in his preschool class in the fall. We decided to meet at the zoo since they're having a dinosaur exhibit right now that the boys would enjoy. It turned out to be a beautiful day (one of the first really nice days we had this spring) and was perfect for spending at the zoo.

We let the boys each choose a couple of animals to see in addition to the dinosaurs. All our pictures this time are of them sitting on statues of the various animals we saw (though we also visited the elephants, orangoutangs, and a few others). Gareth loved the dinosaurs, of course, so we went through there twice.

Gareth's asked a couple of times since to go back (primarily for the dinosaurs, which won't be around forever), so we might have to get another visit in over the summer.